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Local musicians Christopher Mathews and Jarod Spencer to perform in Miami
For those who didn’t know it, local musicians Christopher Mathews and Jarod Spencer are performing tomorrow night at the Copper Mine Picture Cafe in downtown Miami. In anticipation of the show, GMT took a few minutes to catch up with Mathews and chat about songwriting, his love-hate relationship with Globe-Miami, and what’s coming next.
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“I always come back for some reason.”
That’s Mathews on the other end of the phone. The young singer/songwriter, who was planning to head to Omaha not long ago, and has passed time in places like Juno, Memphis, Knoxville, and Portland, always seems to find himself coming home again.
“I get tired of it, but I miss it when I’m gone,” he continues. “It’s got a magnetism, and it’s got one hell of a history.”
In many ways, home serves as a kind of recharging station for him.
Nowadays, Mathews, who just turned 23, is recharging in Miami. For now.
Meanwhile, he is working on his fourth album, which he hopes to put out in upcoming months. It’s material he’s been sitting on awhile, he says. That’s just his approach. Sometimes the song stays in his head for years before it ever gets laid out.
You might call his music indie folk, though he doesn’t necessarily gravitate toward a specific genre. He plays an acoustic guitar, as well as the piano. Right now he’s trying to record with the mandolin.
Nowadays he is just as easily inspired by Conor Oberst and Simon Joyner as he is by Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.
What he can tell you is angst made him pick up the guitar.
When he first watched Dylan play in Martin Scorsese’s “No Direction Home”, that was it. It was 5 in the morning, and Mathews was awestruck.
“It made me realize I had been living my life wrong,” he says. “It made me want to achieve something, or grow.”
He’s made a name for himself playing and performing around Globe-Miami ever since, including at Vida E Caffe, which is how he met Spencer. The two met during one of the open mic nights there.
So, if you have the chance, take the time to catch Mathews perform tomorrow, because you never know when a free spirit will up and leave again.
Christopher Mathews and Jarod Spencer will perform Saturday, June 22, starting at 7 p.m. at the Copper Mine Picture Cafe, located at 418 W Sullivan St. Miami, AZ.
Jenn Walker began writing for Globe Miami Times in 2012 and has been a contributor ever since. Her work has also appeared in Submerge Magazine, Sacramento Press, Sacramento News & Review and California Health Report. She currently teaches Honors English at High Desert Middle School and mentors Globe School District’s robotics team.
